Just curious, other than taking Vitamin D pills - what are some natural diets that are rich in Vitamin D?
According to my doctor, raising vit D through diet is not reasonable. It’s sunlight or pills/shots if sunlight won’t do it (genetics or climate).
In peak summer with being outdoors 2+ hours every day my Vit D was 30 (<30 is inadequate) and drank fortified almond milk daily. In winter it drops to 20 with similar outdoor time. Been on a 50,000 pill once a week since.
Maybe someone will share a well informed diet that contradicts my doctor.
I get the sense that you have to eat a lot of fish, which introduces heavy metal concerns because of modern fishing, which is why my doctor went the route he did. And how do you know the one type of mushroom actually gets the right light to have natural Vit D—-raw ingredients like mushrooms don’t usually have nutrition labels.
> Been on a 50,000 pill once a week since.
FYI, spiking Vitamin D levels in the blood weekly might not be the best idea, though it's not exactly proven. There's a theory that spiking Vitamin D like that can promote blood vessel calcification. There's some more theory that Vitamin K administered at the same time might help.
It could be safer to do 5,000 IU seven days a week than spikes of 50K once a week.
Watch out, though. I was on a similar daily dose and ended up with Vitamin D levels touching the upper limit. Too much Vitamin D is not good for you.
> and drank fortified almond milk daily.
Can't say without seeing the labels, but I wouldn't expect a cup of almond milk to have more than 10-20% of your daily value.
IIRC supplementing K with D also helps D to be absorbed and/or utilized better.
Are you getting enough Magnesium (and also Vitamin B6)? Magnesium is a required cofactor of Vitamin D in many bodily processes.
Cod liver oil is probably the best choice, as it also includes DHA, EPA and vitamin A, providing most things that would not be provided by vegetable oil (the only essential fatty substance that is neither in vegetable oil nor in cod liver oil is vitamin K2).
Well made cod liver oil is tasty and you can add it to food together with whatever else kind of oil you prefer (after food is cooked, not before, as it is heat sensitive). No more than 10 mL/day is necessary.
At least at the analysis reports that I have seen in the EU, fish oil has never been found with high content of mercury, even if the fish from which it has been extracted are likely to have been contaminated with mercury. Moreover, cod liver oil is sold in the EU as recommended for children and pregnant women. I doubt that any company would have the guts to sell such products here without taking care to make frequent chemical analyses to ensure that the product is never contaminated.
Chicken liver is also rich in vitamin D, but it is not advisable to eat great quantities, because it may contain too much vitamin A (which is toxic in excessive amounts). The amount of vitamin A in chicken liver or turkey liver is pretty much unpredictable, because it may vary by more than an order of magnitude between various producers, depending on how they feed the birds.
Most vitamin D3 pills contain vitamin D3 that is produced from sheep wool (i.e. from lanolin).
There are a lot of every day foods with a good supply of vitamin D.
https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/resources/2020-2025-dietar...
I recommend saving a copy of .gov website sources in case the regime decides it is unacceptable speech.
Sources: Fish (generally fatty: trout, salmon, tuna, herring, sardines, tilapia, flounder), Mushrooms (some, large variety in quantity).
Note the article is "food sources" so it includes fortified (dairy, juice) which do not contain vitamin D naturally.
The substance in mushrooms (ergocalciferol) has a structure similar to the true vitamin D (cholecalciferol a.k.a. vitamin D3).
Nevertheless, it seems that it is not able to substitute vitamin D in all its functions. Therefore it is not advisable to count on it as a source of vitamin D.
There has been a company that has claimed that they have discovered a species of lichen that contains true vitamin D. Nevertheless, their advertising has seemed highly suspicious and it looked more like a scheme to separate naive vegans from their money.
Even if it were true, exploiting wild lichen would be much more unethical than eating the normal vitamin D3 supplements made from sheep wool. The reason is that wild lichens grow very slowly and exploiting a species for a food supplement would cause a very high risk of extinction for that species.
In any vertebrate animal, the liver is the part with the greatest content of vitamin D.
Uh. Okay buddy, thanks for that.
P.S. most milk sold in the US is Vitamin D fortified.
Mushrooms. You need to leave them gill side up in the sun for a day (behind a window is fine).